Is RCEP a tool that China hopes to use to promote its interests in the region?

China’s accession to the WTO in 2001, far from facilitating a move towards a market, liberal economy has helped facilitate the perpetuation of Communist Party rule and enabled China to exploit international markets to produce a dominant manufacturing and economic capability. RCEP could be thought of as an attempt, at a regional level, to achieve what the WTO has failed to do: to make China a compliant member of the trading community. It is a high-risk project and could back-fire if not handled carefully by RCEP members. China has demonstrated its mastery of economic state craft. It has often used economic policy to achieve geopolitical ends. Its stated geopolitical aim is “national rejuvenation”. To most that means regional domination. Is RCEP a tool China hopes to use to achieve that end? If so, would an expanded CPTPP, excluding China but with greater regional participation, not provide a better forum for setting higher standard rules of trade and deepening economic cooperation?

Without the details of the agreement it is impossible to say how RCEP will change the region, if indeed it does at all. Claiming RCEP as a triumph for rules-based trade is as premature as labeling India’s absences an historic blunder. What this month’s announcement does highlight is the fact that the region faces a gargantuan challenge in promoting free and fair trade along market driven lines when the regional economic hegemon is a non-market economy.

Footnote: RCEP Chapter Titles

Chapters on: 1) Initial Provisions and General Definitions; 2) Trade in Goods; 3) Rules of Origin, including Annex on Product Specific Rules; 4) Customs Procedures and Trade Facilitation; 5) Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures; 6) Standards, Technical Regulations and Conformity Assessment Procedures; 7) Trade Remedies; 8) Trade in Services, including Annexes on Financial Services, Telecommunication Services, and Professional Services; 9) Movement of Natural Persons; 10) Investment; 11) Intellectual Property; 12) Electronic Commerce; 13) Competition; 14) Small and Medium Enterprises; 15) Economic and Technical Cooperation; 16) Government Procurement; 17) General Provisions and Exceptions; 18) Institutional Provisions; 19) Dispute Settlement; and 20) Final Provisions.